{"id":446929,"date":"2026-04-21T19:30:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/446929\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T19:30:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:30:13","slug":"neon-legal-battle-may-lay-bare-its-film-accounting-practices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/446929\/","title":{"rendered":"Neon Legal Battle May Lay Bare Its Film Accounting Practices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn December 2018, director Alan Elliott was over the moon. Amazing Grace, his long-shelved Aretha Franklin concert film that had faced years of legal setbacks in a battle with the singer\u2019s estate had just set a box office record at New York\u2019s Film Forum, where it opened to qualify for the Academy Awards. In four hours, it had sold out two weeks\u2019 worth of screenings \u2014 the biggest presale in the theater\u2019s 48-year history.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy all appearances, the title had all the makings of a hit doc, the kind of movie that garners serious buzz by word-of-mouth. It wasn\u2019t your typical West Village cinephile flocking to the film. Families and older folks showed up to watch the live recording of the most successful gospel album in history.<\/p>\n

\n\tAcross the coast, Spike Lee had hosted an Academy-member screening as part of the campaign to get the movie on the Oscar doc shortlist. Netflix made an offer. So did A24, MGM and Endeavor. But it was Neon<\/a> that ultimately acquired the movie in a deal that included a $1.5 million advance.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeon president Tom Quinn had seen Amazing Grace at its DOC NYC premiere, describing the viewing as a \u201cspiritual experience in a theater\u201d that \u201cdefies categorization on all levels.\u201d The fledgling distributor had shown the wherewithal to turn around acquisitions into splashy releases in a short time. By Elliott\u2019s thinking, he was Oscar-bound.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA still from Aretha Franklin doc Amazing Grace, which currently sits at 99% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTelluride Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tBut flash forward a year, and the movie didn\u2019t garner much awards contention and got a limited theatrical run before ending up on Hulu. Elliott sued Neon in 2022, faulting it for a series of missteps that undermined the potential success of the movie and positioning expenses on the production so that he never breaks even. The long-running case provides a rare glimpse into a movie\u2019s finances. Discrepancies in financial statements have been uncovered. So have millions of dollars in legal fees charged to the film for Neon to defend itself from Elliott\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt would be a rare spectacle if the case goes to trial, with Quinn potentially testifying and the public airing of communications by other Neon executives. A jury would assess the distributor\u2019s finances and accounting practices, including the kind of information that could give talent a leg up in negotiations, as chatter swirls of a Neon sale. It\u2019s the kind of case that could embolden other creators to sue.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t sign up to become some crazy martyr indie movie guy,\u201d Elliott, who mortgaged his home three times to finance the movie, tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cBut I\u2019m the only guy, for better or worse, who broke the first rule of Hollywood: don\u2019t put your own money in. I did, so now it\u2019s incredibly personal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, Neon is largely recognized as a unicorn in the indie film world, where it\u2019s becoming harder to find buyers that will take risks betting on outside-the-mainstream titles as box office revenue shrinks. Along with A24, it\u2019s become the go-to home of boundary-pushing filmmakers looking to court the Letterboxd Generation of under-35 moviegoers. But back in 2019, when the distributor was handling Amazing Grace\u2019s rollout, Elliott claims that Neon didn\u2019t have a standalone marketing or accounting arm as it grew from a fledgling distributor to the industry\u2019s \u201cIt\u201d indie outfit.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore than seven years after it premiered, Amazing Grace isn\u2019t showing a profit. Depending on who you ask, you\u2019ll get a different answer to the question of why. Indie movies typically don\u2019t do big numbers at the box office, where the documentary made roughly $4.5 million. That goes double for a niche title like Amazing Grace. Indeed, many of Neon\u2019s filmmakers do not see profits from their movies. Asked when expenses are typically made back on the company\u2019s movies, Neon CFO Ryan Friscia said in a deposition, \u201cI\u2019d say on a lot of films, it never recoups,\u201d according to a court filing.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, Elliott accused the company of fraud and breach of contract, alleging it failed to properly account for revenues and costs involving the movie. Accounting statements show that the company incurred $4.6 million in distribution expenses, all of which are labeled under industry-standard, catch-all categories like \u201ccreative advertising,\u201d \u201cmarketing and promotion,\u201d and \u201cother miscellaneous.\u201d And the more Neon charges <\/strong>to the movie, the more interest it earns from these expenditures and the $1.5 million advance it paid to Elliott that has yet to be recouped, which has netted the distributor at least $370,000. As of March 2025, Amazing Grace is nearly $2.9 million in the hole, according to an accounting statement read by THR, which reviewed hundreds of pages of court filings for this story.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re extremely proud of the campaign we executed for Amazing Grace,\u201d a Neon rep said when asked for comment by THR. \u201cWe strongly disagree with Alan Elliott\u2019s claims, the vast majority of which have already been dismissed by the Court.\u00a0Neon has acted in accordance with its contractual obligations and remains confident in its position.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Quinn, CEO of Neon.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty<\/p>\n

\n\tElliott, the son of prolific composer Jack Elliott, cut his teeth in music. Warner Bros. Records signed him to a recording contract after graduating from Northwestern University in 1986, and, after a stint at Atlantic Records as a producer, he returned to the label as a creative liaison for the likes of Prince, Miles Davis and Paul Simon. In 1994, he and Ari Emanuel started Matter Inc., intending to make big bucks selling music online. \u201cI said to Ari we are all going to be getting music and movies on the internet,\u201d he says. \u201cAri couldn\u2019t even turn on his cell phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen that venture didn\u2019t work out, Elliott returned to the recording business, turning down overtures from Emanuel, who was the best man at his wedding, to work as an agent. He composed and arranged scores for TV shows, including Here and Now, The Naked Truth and the Grammy Awards, for the next decade, playing a major role in trying to unionize composers and lyricists along the way (his signature on every email reads \u201cpower to the people.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n\tElliott had been eyeing Amazing Grace for decades. The movie is the product of a massive screw up by Sydney Pollack, who spent two days in a Watts church in 1972 filming Franklin when she recorded her album but forgot to use clapperboards, meaning that the footage couldn\u2019t be synchronized with the sound. Enter Elliott, who had learned of the shoot in 1990 from Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler and never forgot. He bought the assets from Warner Bros. (Emanuel put in a good word). And with the help of digital detectives at a film lab, he successfully synced the footage, though there was another obstacle: Franklin, who sued multiple times to block its release for undisclosed reasons. The movie only got to theaters in 2018 after the singer died, with Sabrina Owens, the executor of the Franklin\u2019s estate, clearing the way. <\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time Neon picked up the movie, it was outsourcing all marketing and accounting functions to Alamo Drafthouse, according to court filings. The two companies have close ties, with founder Tim League also cofounding Neon with Quinn.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt the very beginning phase, it didn\u2019t have a marketing team. It was a total startup,\u201d said Neon CFO Christian Parkes, who noted<\/a> in an industry podcast earlier this year that he worked at Alamo Drafthouse and Neon for the first nine months of the distributor\u2019s existence. \u201cAnd so Neon was using my team at Alamo Drafthouse\u201d to \u201cmarket the Neon movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added, \u201cIt was like, \u2018Hey, can you place the media? Can you do the creative? Can you guys do this part of the business of releasing films?’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd because Neon didn\u2019t have a marketing arm, it brought in outside consultants, whose fees were billed as distribution expenses, according to Maurice Pessah, a lawyer for Elliott. One charged the production roughly $13,000 to book the movie for theaters in the East Coast and Midwest, a function the director says he was led to believe that the company could handle in-house.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder the distribution deal, employee salaries can\u2019t be charged to the movie. But the lawsuit alleges Neon double dipped. One example: Amazing Grace was billed over $16,000 in consulting fees for digital market services by a company owned by Andrew Brown, Neon\u2019s president of digital distribution who was the company\u2019s svp of digital strategy, marketing and distribution at the time of the charge in 2019, according to a review of court documents.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeon disputes that Brown was a full-time employee when the charge was incurred, though a 2022 report<\/a> when he was promoted to his current position says that he has held an executive title since 2017. \u201cAndrew started as a consultant in 2017 and was hired in early 2020,\u201d Friscia said in his deposition.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s the kind of thing that would make you want to take a second look\u201d at the accounting statements, says Rob Rosenberg, partner at legal advisory firm Moses Singer and former Showtime Networks executive\u202fvp and general counsel. \u201cI can understand the distrust on Alan\u2019s part.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the same issues flowed from Neon\u2019s finance department, with the company largely outsourcing those duties to Alamo Drafthouse. There were no dedicated, full-time employees in that arm, which handles verifying and logging all distribution expenses for accounting statements, other than Neon former vice president of finance James Wehrfritz, until 2020, when Friscia was hired, per court documents. This was a source of contention between Quinn and Wehrfritz, who said in a deposition that he \u201cthought it made sense to have more permanent resources.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two sides were at odds. Wehrfritz explained, \u201cThe issue was in terms of the appropriate level of employees that need to be hired into the accounting\/finance function.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe solution wasn\u2019t much better, at least initially. Neon hired outside consultants, one of whom Wehrfritz said in a deposition had a \u201cbasic lack of understanding of how things worked\u201d and wasn\u2019t familiar with accounting practices \u201cspecific to the industry.\u201d <\/strong>From January to April 2019, when the bulk of distribution expenses were charged to Amazing Grace, Wehrfritz was the sole internal employee at Neon responsible for accounting on 10 films (for comparison, Orchard Films had two employees handling accounting on five movies when Wehrfritz was at the company). Even two years later, when the distributor acquired Pig, he had no full-time Neon employees under his supervision to handle logging expenses on a catalogue of over 40 films, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tLater, Neon discovered its own errors in Elliott\u2019s accounting statements, one being a $30,000 expense that should have been catalogued under its moon landing doc Apollo 11 that was improperly charged to Amazing Grace. Another involved a miscategorization of hundreds of thousands of dollars, though the charge didn\u2019t impact the final recoupment tally for the film. \u201cIt\u2019s an embarrassing error,\u201d Friscia said of the mistake in a deposition. \u201cLike I would take it personally if I had done that.\u201d To Elliott, these seemingly minuscule mistakes that were ultimately corrected encapsulate Neon\u2019s deception. The director contends that if Neon could be wrong about a $30,000 charge, what else is it wrong about, even if it\u2019s not outright lying?<\/p>\n

\n\tInternal communications uncovered in discovery indicate that there were oversights as Neon built out its accounting department. \u201cOur finance team has been revamping their internal process this year, and unfortunately, these months have slipped through the cracks,\u201d wrote Sumyi Antonson, Neon evp of theatrical marketing and distribution, in an email in August 2019. <\/p>\n

\n\tPart of Elliott\u2019s falling out with Neon involves what the director believes was the impotency of its marketing campaign. Amazing Grace was praised by critics, with one particularly laudatory <\/strong>review<\/a> from The New York Times\u2018 Wesley Morris.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut internally, Neon didn\u2019t consider a serious Academy Awards push. Elliott had started self-distributing the film over objections from the distributor to wait. Neon bought it anyway. \u201cWe accepted that Alan had made a miscalculation and a mistake by qualifying the film in that year, and we told him that,\u201d said Quinn in a deposition. \u201cAnd we accepted that he disagreed with that advice, and we let him proceed.\u201d Neon personnel, Quinn added, understood Amazing Grace \u201cwas not going to be an aggressive contender.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, Elliott took the lead marketing his <\/strong>movie, scheduling screenings and handling public relations without looping in Neon. To Quinn, the director overstepped. Tensions flared. In a heated back-and-forth in 2019, Quinn said he was called a \u201cbitch\u201d by Amazing Grace producer Tirrell Whittley. \u201cAlan was making unreasonable requests,\u201d Quinn recalled. \u201cWe conceded every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThings only got worse after the movie finished its theatrical run just shy of $5 million, which would\u2019ve triggered a $500,000 bonus for Elliott, he says. His team pressed Neon for financial information, a major point being how more than $2 million was spent marketing Amazing Grace. For some of these inquiries, the read-in-between-the-lines accusation was that Neon is fudging the numbers. Elliott insists his movie has been profitable for the company.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have recouped our advance, and we have recouped our expenses,\u201d Quinn said in a deposition. \u201cI believe we have made money on this film.\u201d That assertion was later contested by Friscia, who said that Quinn was \u201cmistaken.\u201d Jeff Deutchman, Neon\u2019s president of acquisitions, development and production, said Amazing Grace was \u201cfinancially modestly successful for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBy 2021, Quinn was done engaging with Elliott on quarterly financial statements beyond what Neon was obligated to provide under the distribution agreement. He thought Neon had gone above and beyond in terms of transparency, including handing over information relating to its licensing fee from Hulu, though he declined providing invoices to back up expenses \u2014 a major point of contention for Elliott. Quinn said he was subject to a \u201cnever-ending amount of harassment\u201d from the director, who \u201csimply would not be happy with any amount of information or postmortem discussion that we provided.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI recall that we urged Alan to audit us,\u201d Quinn stressed.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut when Elliott moved to initiate an audit, Neon responded by filing an arbitration claim against the production. It said it would drop the matter if the production banner for the movie agreed to release the distributor from any potential claims arising out of prior accounting statements. It also moved for profits from Elliott allegedly licensing clips of Amazing Grace without Neon\u2019s consent, a matter that caused friction between the two sides, and for the director to cease bad-mouthing Neon to Criterion, which was engaged in talks to release the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tElliott balked. And on the day of trial, Neon said it wasn\u2019t prepared to argue the case, which was later dismissed. But by that point, all the money the production scraped together to conduct the audit had been spent on legal fees, the director says. <\/p>\n

\n\tLater, Neon billed costs from that arbitration to the production, plus millions of dollars for Quinn Emanuel, whose lead lawyer for the case charges $695 per hour, to defend the company from Elliott\u2019s ongoing lawsuit. By last year, the total reached more than $2.5 million, which has accrued interest since then (legal fees haven\u2019t been charged to the production,\u00a0according to a source in Neon\u2019s camp). It\u2019s the biggest line item in the director\u2019s participation statement. The move essentially ensures that neither side will see money from the movie for years, if at all.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn court, Neon was poised to win the lawsuit before it got to trial. The court\u2019s posture, however, changed when it learned of Neon charging its legal fees to the production. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone would have agreed to that in the distribution agreement,\u201d said State Supreme Court Justice Nancy M. Bannon in a hearing in May 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\tElliott seeks at least $5 million. But for him, it\u2019s not just about the money; It\u2019s about getting what he considers is rightfully owed to him. He\u2019s turned down settlement offers and is prepared to file another lawsuit. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe poster for Amazing Grace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In December 2018, director Alan Elliott was over the moon. Amazing Grace, his long-shelved Aretha Franklin concert film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,18,117,19,17,7674],"class_list":{"0":"post-446929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-neon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116444359984297321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}